Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

High fuel flexibility of solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) affords the possibility to use relatively cheap, safe, and readily available hydrocarbon (e.g., CH4) or coal syngas (i.e., H2-CO mixtures) fuels. Utilization of such fuels would greatly lower fuel cost and increase the feasibility of SOFC commercialization, especially for near-term adoption in anticipation of the long-awaited so-called "hydrogen economy." Current SOFC technology has shown good performance with a wide range of hydrocarbon and syngas fuels, but there are still significant challenges for practical application. Our research in this area is focused on creating detailed, multiscale, physics-based, computational models to facilitate better understanding of very specific elementary processes, to pinpoint rate-determining (and hence, performance-limiting) processes, and to provide performance predictions under a range of conditions.